"Oh, it is such waste of time waiting for a chaperon on a fine day; but we shall be too late to secure places if we delay."
"Yes, we had better be jogging. Can you dine with us to-day? And we'll have a talk over old times, and my girl will give us a song or two. Pot luck, my dear fellow, but you shan't starve."
"Many thanks, I am engaged unfortunately," returned Glynn, half-pleased, half-regretful that he had a real excuse ready.
"Well, to-morrow then, at six, sharp, and we will go and hear the new operette at the Comique after."
"You are very good. I shall be most happy," said Glynn, with an irresistible impulse as if some voice, not his own, answered for him.
"Well, good-bye for the present. By the way, where do you hang out? What's your hotel? Wagram?—very good." He swept off his hat in continental style, and his daughter bestowed a bow and smile upon Glynn which conveyed to him in some occult manner the impression that it pleased her to think he was a friend of her father.
How in the name of all that was contradictory did he come to have such a daughter? From the crown of her head to her dainty shoes she looked thoroughly a gentlewoman. More distinguished than fashionable in style, and so delightfully tranquil in pose and manner. "I hate chattering, animated women," thought Glynn, with that readiness to condemn everything different from the attraction of the moment, peculiar to the stronger and more logical sex.
It was too dreadful to think of so fair a creature, who looked the incarnation of high-toned purity, being surrounded by a swarm of sharpers—for that Lambert alias Merrick, and a dozen other names probably, could have ever settled down to sober, honest work, seemed impossible.
Glynn dived deep into the recesses of his memory, recalling all the circumstances of his former acquaintance with Merrick or Lambert, and necessarily reviewing his own life also.
He had lost his parents in boyhood, but was left well provided for, and had been carefully educated, taking a creditable degree at Oxford shortly before coming of age. Then came a spell of wandering, of high play, of rage for costly excitement, which, with a love of speculation, beggared him in a few years. This climax found him in New York, and for a considerable time he was put to strange shifts to make out a living, for he would not beg, he was too true a gentleman to stoop to dishonesty; but he was by no means ashamed to dig, or to do any work worthy an honorable man. During his desperate struggle with fortune he joined an exploring expedition, and found himself among queer companions in one of those wonderful improvised far-western towns, which spring up, mushroom-like, almost in a night, having spent the little money he had scraped together in his attempt to reach it, after the failure and dispersion of the prospecting party he had been induced to join.